Can the Death Anxiety Be Dispelled?
-- Investigation based on Plato’s Text
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54097/8xf4m776Keywords:
Plato, Death Anxiety, Eros, Logos, Emotional PsychologyAbstract
Death anxiety is a unique and mysterious breakthrough in Plato’s philosophy, for which Plato put forward a solution worthy of discussion. In the text dominated by Plato’s middle and late dialogues, he tried to dispel death anxiety by showing a “true death situation” from the perspective of the philosopher Socrates. Furthermore, its complexity made Socrates have to look for its realization in the confrontation between eros and logos, so as to finally define it as a philosophical fusion to eliminate the contradiction. However, Russell et al. we’re not completely satisfied with this scheme. From the perspective of contemporary emotional psychology, the limitations of this scheme can be effectively explained and clarified. In other words, the “true death situation” is not only a cognition, but also a practice of death and survival. Through Platonic philosophical life, individuals gain life tranquility, thus effectively alleviating death anxiety.
Downloads
References
[1] Plato, Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, Phaedrus and Crito, in Plato: Complete Works, Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by John Cooper, Cambeidge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.
[2] Franco Trabattoni, From Death to Life: Key Themes in Plato’s Phaedo, Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2023, p.34, p.30, p.39, p.27-28.
[3] Yu, J. Y., On the Structure of Plato's Ideological World, Philosophical Research, 1988, vol.2, p.67-68.
[4] Wang, X. Y. & Zhu, W. L., A Critical Analysis of the Immortality of the Soul in Phaedo, Philosophical Research, 2013, vol.1, p.74-80.
[5] Bertrand Arthur, The History of Western Philosophy, Translated by He Zhaoyan and Joseph Lee, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1988, p.181.
[6] Wang, B. Y., Analysis on the Anxiety of Death Behind Plato’s Argument for Immortality of the Soul: Mainly According to Phaedo, Journal of Yibin University, 2020, vol.10, p.87, p.74-80.
[7] Charles Kahn, “Plato’s Theory of Desire”, The Review of Metaphysics, vol.41, no.1, 1987, pp.77-103, p.99, p.82.
[8] Ding, J., On Soul Immorality in Plato’s Phaedo, Journal of Southwest Minzu University (Humanities and Social Sciences Edition), 2001, vol.4, p.158.
[9] Paul Friedländer, Plato: An Introduction, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, p.72, p.78.
[10] Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p.205.
[11] Charles Kahn, “Plato’s Theory of Desire,” The Review of Metaphysics, vol.41, no.1, 1987, pp.77-103, p.99, p.87.
[12] Allan Bloom, Love and Friendship, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993, p.431.
[13] Allan Bloom, The Ladder of Love about Plato’s Symposium, Translated by Qin Lu, Beijing: Huaxia Publishing House, 2017, p.164-165.
[14] A. W Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, p.77.
[15] S. Rosen, The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 1988, C. Griswold, Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedo. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
[16] Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, Translated by Weng Shaojun, Shangdong: Shangdong Renmin Publishing House, 1992, pp.155-156.
[17] Irvin Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy, Translated by Huang Zheng, Zhang Yiling, Shen Dongyu, Beijing: The Commercial Press, 2015, p.138.
[18] Jesse Prinz, “Emotions: How Many Are There?” in E. Margolis, R. Samuels, and S. P. Stich, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, p.186.
[19] L. F. Barrett, “Feeling is Perceiving,” in L. F. Barrett, P. Niedenthal and P. Winkielman, eds., Emotion and Consciousness, New York: The Guilford Press, 2005, p.264, p.272.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Academic Journal of Management and Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
